


Persephone's Crown

by prodigy



Category: Black Swan (2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-24
Updated: 2011-01-24
Packaged: 2017-10-15 01:40:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prodigy/pseuds/prodigy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You marry into royalty and you shed your other life like an unwanted skin, swanfeathers swept under the bed where your prize can't see them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Persephone's Crown

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Porn Battle XI prompt: Nina/Thomas, "monsters."

Odette dies on the stage in her body. Odile walks into the wings wearing Nina's skin, aglitter in white and the thunderous applause of the opening night. It's Thomas she's looking for and, as he shakes her in elation and starts to give her a triumphant little hug, she lays her hands on his chest and pushes him back. He steps back, quizzical, but then she's drawn her arms tight around his neck and pulled them together for a lingering passionate kiss -- in front of Lily, in front of everyone, so everyone can see her claim. His mouth tastes better now that she's open to the fullness of it, his hair perfect for tangling her hands in. He's perfect. She can feel his human heart pound in his chest in excitement for the dance he loves so much. It's fierce and burning, that love, and burns away all the human girls to ash in time.

"My little princess," he calls her with a smile, pulling back so their noses just touch.

She is not his little princess. She is his swan queen. But she has no demure shiver for him this time; she traces his angular cheekbone with her thumb, humors him with a smile. "My sweet prince," she says, links her fingers with his and stakes her claim again with her mouth on his.

She doesn't go home this time. The only home that matters is his: you marry into royalty and you shed your other life like an unwanted skin, swanfeathers swept under the bed where your prize can't see them. They're not all over each other in the taxi; something is holding him back, she realizes, something in the length of her spine and the way she looks away from him like it's  _her_  attention to give  _him_ , which it is. She won. So she just holds his hand, and, at one point, touches his pulse on the hot skin of his throat to feel the murmur of his heart again.

When they get home, though, he draws her in by the waist and presses their bodies together immediately -- he's strong, her Prince, he gets what he wants, he wouldn't be good enough for her if he didn't -- and she meets his mouth and his body with warm and hungry desire, running her hands over his chest and stomach through his clothing and then under it. His hands are rough over her brassiere, on her breasts and the soft skin of her back between the joints of her wings, or where the joints of her wings used to be. She's not sure. She doesn't care any more. She knows what she wants: her prize, in all his strength and virility and the hard muscles of his shoulders, his hand under her skirt when she straddles his lap. She sighs and shivers when he touches her through her panties and says something in French in surprise and amusement.

He uses girls up, she knows. She understands. They're little birds; once upon a time she wrung her use out of a shrieking one too, once upon a time she snapped its neck. But no, he'd never had the chance, not Lily, not Beth,  _hah_ , he'd never had the chance to meet  _her_  before.

"You're perfect," she murmurs sweetly, but her hands raked down his back aren't sweet, or the care she shows the button and zipper for that matter, which isn't a lot. But he is. He is. She chooses perfectly.

She doesn't pleasure him, though, just stretches back on the cushions of his canopied bed like it's her boudoir. And it is now. She giggles when he kisses the inside of her thigh and gasps and runs her fingers through his hair when he hooks her underwear through his fingers and pulls it down and kisses higher, sliding a finger inside of her as he teases her with his mouth for a moment or two; it's amazing, of course, she kicks her knees open to welcome it, but soon she has her sights on higher things. "Come here," she says, and yanks his hair hard when he takes his time of it.

That surprises him and he looks up for a moment, startled. Well, he's always full of his own surprises in that brilliant mind of his. She has her surprises too. She does now. She is not his little princess.

"Come  _here_ ," she says again, putting a little bit of plaintiveness into her voice, and he complies and she hooks her legs around his bony hips and feels him take her in the next moment, hard and desperate and with the seductive enamel all stripped away; he's tall, broad-shouldered, perfect even at this age, she spends almost as much time kissing him and running her hands over the planes of his back as she does arching up into him and crying out at every impact and the tight heat between them. This is almost her prize; her prize is the rest of their lives, but this is unwrapping the ribbon, the roughness of his stubble against her throat, his big hands around her wrists, feeling herself come around him even before he does. It's a wave of warmth, from the middle of her rushing outward, and she goes liquid and still to relish it just as she feels him seize up and grip her shoulders.

Afterward he lies half on his back, half on his side with his arm over her and she's arranged with careless afterthought over her side of the bed, long legs kicked out to take up more space than she would otherwise, her fair half-share of the mattress. Her hair is tucked carefully off to one side so she doesn't get herself tangled in it. That would irritate her.

"I was thinking," she says.

He's tired. It's a little endearing. She's never seen him this kind of tired before, poor thing. "Thinking?"

"Our futures together," she rolls out from under his arm and he obligingly rolls onto his back and braces his arms under his head. "You and me. What do you think?"

Thomas laughs his easy charming laugh. He thinks he has a response for this, she can tell. "I think it's going to be long and illustrious, my dear." He kisses her on the neck, just by the hollow. "And fun."

"I was thinking about the next ballet we put on for the company," she tells the ceiling.

This is unusual. He glances at her.

"I'm thinking that the world could do with a re-interpretation of  _Coppelia_ ," she says with delicacy. "I know the music. Bring a little  _unheimlich_  to the story, Freud always thought so, didn't he? I think it'd take a master to do something new with it: but you're a master, and the company hasn't touched it in a while, have they?"

He's silent.

She closes her eyes. "What do you think, Thomas?"

"I think," he says uncertainly, "that it's good to think far ahead, Nina, but can I say you've changed a bit?"

She thinks this is funny for some reason and giggles again, and muffles it into his shoulder. She does love him, after all. Don't make any mistake about that. But she stretches him out on her silence this time until he's prompted to speak again.

"I'll think about it," he says and smiles at her.

"I just think it'd be perfect," says the Swan Queen to her prince, "for us." And she gives a tired little sigh and curls up next to him with her arm tucked around his waist; he falls asleep first, though, a little tensely, with a sigh of breath, and she waits up watching him with her red eyes blinking in the dark.


End file.
